I get asked this a lot. People find my lifestyle strange. Others are more blunt and call it irresponsible, escapist, unrealistic. Lately, I’ve even been called un-American and a traitor for preferring to live abroad rather than live out every single, long and drawn out day within the boundaries of US soil, which is coincidentally, not consequentially, where I happened to fall out of the void into this Earth.

I’ll take a moment to defend myself and other vagabonds.

First and foremost, as much as one may find my lifestyle absurd, I’d like to say with resounding clarity that I find their lifestyles absurd. When someone squints their eyebrows at me from their corner, a corner of monotonous, statist, stagnant boredom, I’m surprised at how someone can speak of their life as though it is the way to live. The best way to live.

You must understand that I see my life as having started at a random point and when I start with this idea, my destination is suddenly more variable. I do not see myself as American. I see myself as having been born in a land called America (For now. Countries tend to change every few hundred years.) I don’t find this consequential or defining. It’s random.

I’m a citizen of Earth. Or, even further, I’m a collection of stardust buzzing around on a much larger collection of stardust. So, don’t tell me I need a 9-5 and a mortgage and I’ll try to refrain from telling you that you need an imagination and a set of jumper cables wired up to your main arteries to thump you back to life.

Staying put seems like a crime to me.

To stay exactly where you started out. And for what reason? To stay somewhere because that is where you have always been is not a reason. It’s an excuse.

I’d like to turn, though, to those who find the greatest rewards in life to be those of security, stability, and predictability. I do understand that everyone has their preferences. But I cannot help observing that life is inherently volatile, insecure, and unpredictable. In a word: to seek this is to delude oneself.

My sister died when I was 15 and she was 10. This snapped my arteries into high gear. I AM ALIVE was in the thump of every heartbeat after that moment. Then it followed as such…

Time is limited here…

We know so little about ourselves…

We know so little about why we are here…

And we die before we ever know what we were supposed to do here…

Because we never ask…

Because we are so damn afraid…

And then it’s over. Then we die. The chance to learn, understand, and grow passes by. It ends.

We leave behind a Scandinavian wilderness never explored, a French beach never walked upon, a Roman cathedral never entered, a spirit never challenged.

When someone asks me why I travel so much, it’s so hard to answer. In short, I’d like to always say: because we are dying, and this is all we have.

Restlessness. Flight. Taking flight. Movement. Move to there. Move to where that new language is, the one I haven’t heard yet. Get on the train that goes past a field of sunflowers by the million. Sit with your face nearly pressed into the glass, like a 5-year-old child, wondering how many sunflowers are out there, wondering how fast the train is travelling, how many miles we’ve gone, and how it’s possible that someone could plant that many sunflowers. Who waters them and how? Does it take all day?

And why, really, why have I never heard of this before? How did I really go my entire life without ever SEEING such a sight before. Rows and rows in miles along the train, these tall, green stems with their bright yellow circular heads. (Do they go on forever?)

Who knows what this looks like? You cannot imagine it until you see it. Until you realize that you’re not behind an office desk, at a mall, preparing for things we truly may not live to witness. You’re flying past a gazillion sunflowers on a train towards where.

The ocean was grand. I grew up on the California coast. That ocean could make me cry. Then I found out about miles of sunflowers standing an inch apart, canyons so deep that one could fall (forever?) into darkness, dirt trails through hills of green that dance in the wind, cobblestone pathways, bowing oak trees with stories to tell. I found out that somewhere, out there, are relics of my ancestors. There are monuments speaking of who was here before. There are expanses of this world ever so different from the ones here.

So. Go. Go there.

Uncovering the mystery of this giant playground, as though she is my intimate lover, I seek out every color, each smell, hot and dry climates, depths and corners whether untouched or imprinted upon with billions of footprints across the years.

This life is a wildcard. This body is a temporary vehicle. This world is a big, huge, unread book—it’s something fleeting, as are our lives. Here today. Gone tomorrow.

I’m standing there, about to get off the train. She looks at me and asks how long I’ll be living in this city. “Not long,” I tell her, hoping she’ll understand the hint.

The hint is that I don’t want to carry this string with me forever. At all. Don’t ask me to be your friend. No, we shouldn’t hang out later. Sometimes, goodbye is okay. I’m a vagabond, and I don’t collect people. I meet too many people. Too many. With these meetings, we exchange experiences, sometimes great ones. Sometimes life-changing ones. And then we walk away without looking back.

It’s not cold. It’s just a different way of living your life.

In order to be constantly moving, one must be pretty lightly loaded. Strings tie down a winged creature.

I’m not saying that a vagabond has absolutely no ties or attachments. Often, they do have ties, sometimes ties stronger than non-vagabonds. But these ties are almost definitely few and carefully chosen. In terms of human ties, we can usually count them on just one hand, and of those ties, probably only 1 or 2 of them are nurtured by us. When it comes to “things” then the number drops even more. There might be ONE thing that a vagabond bothers taking with him or her on all adventures. For me, it was a lock of my sister’s hair. She died when I was 15. I carried a lock of her hair with me for over 13 years, to 4 different continents. Even when I gave away everything I owned and rode a bike up to Canada from California, I had her hair with me. (tragically, I lost this item to the sociopath I was recently involved in).

This is my sister, Christen Dawn Smith. She died on October 8th, 1999. She was 10.

But back on topic.

Vagabonds can say GOODBYE better than any other person. I fondly recall some of the most amazing memories with people that I have never seen nor spoken to ever again.

I remember going dancing in Bremen, Germany with a girl from Latvia that I met in the city square earlier that day. I remember she had long black hair and was tottering along in designer high heels that hurt her feet so badly that by the end of the night, she took them off and we walked through the streets back to her apartment in just our bare feet at 4am. I don’t remember her name and I never saw her again. But she is the first woman who ever spontaneously kissed me. She changed my life, because she planted the first seed of doubt in my mind about my own sexuality.

It scared the crap out of me at first, but changed my life.

Angela Bettis and Anna Faris

I remember a guy I met in Istanbul, Turkey, who told me to meet him in front of Starbucks at midnight. We’d just run into each other at Starbucks earlier that day. You’d have to be extremely naive to actually meet a random Turkish man at midnight in Istanbul, and I was exactly that naive. He drove me all over the city, took me to get Turkish ice cream, and told me all about the book he was writing with an ugly but smart female protagonist. I never saw him again and I don’t even remember his name, but I remember him telling me that he’s always wanted to know what it would feel like to kill someone. Shocked, sitting in the passenger seat of this stranger’s car, I realized that I was not completely naive. I was running on pure intuition. Every shred of logic in my head could have told me to never do a single bit of this, but my gut told me I was safe. And I was. He said, “There are much deeper things than philosophy.”

Then there’s the guy I ran into in a shopping mall in California who told me all about his family problems. He was so skinny.

There was also a man once who let me stay in his home, in his bed, and he slept on the couch. He cooked me breakfast every morning and drove me around Seattle to help me figure out the immigration issue I was having with the stupid Canadian border police. We read poetry together and he showed me his model airplane creations.

There was the homeless man that I bought food for and then took home to let him wash his clothes and take a shower at my house.

I spent a couple of days with some rich German guys who were taking a road trip all over America. I just sat in the back seat of their car, listening to them ramble in German. We went to the mall and they ran all over the place yelling, “CONSTIPATION,” into stores. They’d walk up to someone, tap them on the shoulder, and then whisper, “Constipation…” I should never have told them the meaning of that word when they asked me.

Because the beauty of these experiences lies in the heart and spirit of the vagabond. It is due to his or her readiness to completely let go that he or she is able to live 100% and fully in the moment, savoring every second. Listening with the heart. Speaking with a full mind. Seeing with eyes so open that they can barely filter a single stimulus until it’s all just washing in, pouring in, piling in. And then: Goodbye.

I’m so religious about this that I don’t even take photos.

This post is a shout out to people I’ll never see again. It was nice to meet you! Thank you for the some of the most amazing experiences of my life!

This is a beautiful poem written by fellow vagabond Robin Baker. She currently lives in Nepal and has her own website called nomadtracks.org. I encourage you to check out her website, as she’s a fantastic writer with enchanting prose and intriguing tales from the road.

It reminds me of the drive we took almost twelve years ago, an early celebration of my birthday. Just us three; you, Papa and me. You were sober then for the first time in who knows how long. We left behind nights when you would slouch over and rest your head on my shoulder, weeping, “I’m such a horrible mother”. We left behind charges of neglect and screaming fights and lies and empty stomachs and went West. Thank you for that birthday gift, mother.

There is a photo of you days after our return, leaning on your bed, legs thin and bare, shirt raised, displaying ribs blue, purple, blackening. Now I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Did you? Because the night before my eleventh birthday you moved your things and yourself into my room, raged fitfully in my bed all night while my friend and I lay scared on the floor. Your body writhed beneath the moonlight. You moaned and shouted. And when I asked you why you said you hadn’t said anything. Your stick-arm shot up from the bed and, grasped the windowsill as you yelled, “please I have to get up!”I stood, clasped your right hand helped raise you from the bed. Then whoosh—you were too weak to stand.

In the morning Papa wrapped you in a blanket and carried your body, draped over his arms like an empty sheet, down the stairs to the car. To the hospital. I was told to send my friend home and search for anything you may have taken. I reported my findings over the phone: the Tylenol PM you’d been taking nightly for weeks, your prescription, Antabuse, which was supposed to save you from the stuff in the small bottle I found in a box high on the shelf of my closet.

Later Papa returned and brought me to the hospital where I wasn’t allowed to see you. “Too much”, they said. I stayed all day in the hospital waiting room with strangers, nurses, doctors saying “happy birthday, Robin. Happy birthday”.

You were moved to a bigger hospital where we waited for something to happen, for the stomach-ache to subside. I’m still waiting.

Your parents arrived. Finally allowed to see you. We walked down a hall and turned the corner to the last room on the left, through glass doors and curtains to find light leaking through the drawn blinds. An outline of the Rockies painted the backdrop of your body swollen in the hospital bed, of your yellow skin and the pinks of your eyes bulging out between your eyelids. Steady beeps and the gasp of your breathing machine beat out a jumbled melody. I held your hand beneath the sheet while they extracted your blood and cleaned it and put it back inside. I saw it spinning around in tubes next to your bed. They shuffled you over to the chair where you sat with glassy eyes and gurgled and smiled while I tried to talk to you. “Mom, I love you.” You couldn’t say the words but your lips moved.

And then away my brother and I went with your parents to Michigan to wait to hear your voice after a surgery they said you’d die without (if it didn’t kill you). They wanted to stitch up your insides which I saw leaking blood into a box at your bedside. The phone rang while I painted your get-well-sign. It wasn’t you.I watched from inside as Grandpa folded Grandma into his arms and she cried, “my poor baby, my poor baby”.

That night we flew back over the mountains, landed in the airport with the white roof where we were told the machines would be unplugged. It was time to say goodbye. No lights. It was crowded. I’m shy. I held your hand and whispered, “goodbye”.I’m sorry I didn’t say more then. Mother, I’m sorry we didn’t have a better goodbye.

In the morning the phone rang. “Hello? ” I asked. “Mom is with God now”.

Alone, barefoot, I stepped outside greeted the early morning sky, where part of me still lives today. I didn’t see you up there. You used to say that we were connected. “Stuck together like glue.”So when you died a part of me died too.

Now I know you didn’t do it on purpose. Okay, maybe I don’t. Because when you died a part of me died too. I want it back. I look for it here in the desert, among the empty streets, in my car, in my lonely tent and I look in the sand and under the rocks and in the sky and I want even more for you to be there too. Because it would be nice to say happy birthday, Mom.Happy birthday.

I know that you once held dearly to comforts that kept you warm at night. I know that some of those comforts may have hindered your growth, blinded you from beauty, and stifled your essence.

It may have been beliefs about how you ought to live your life that you held on to. It may have been material possessions. It may have been a routine that you could rely on.

Then, one day, you let go. You started the journey of your life.

Here is a lovely poem about letting go. The author is unknown.

LETTING GO TAKES LOVE

To let go does not mean to stop caring; it means I can’t do it for someone else. To let go is not to cut myself off; it’s the realization I can’t control another. To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences. To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands. To let go is not to try to change or blame another; it’s to make the most of myself. To let go is not to care for, but to care about. To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive. To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being. To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their destinies. To let go is not to be protective; it’s to permit another to face reality. To let go is not to deny, but to accept. To let go is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them. To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it. To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody, but to try to become what I dream I can be. To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future. To let go is to fear less and love more Remember: The time to love is short

Note: That breath-taking photo above was taken by a woman named Anna at: http://anna.ogcreation.fr/blog/ I encourage you to visit her blog to see more stunning photography.

This may sound like such a mushy, sentimental post. But I’m serious here. Something about being out on the open road liberates my spirit to such heights that altruism and kindness flow more readily from my being. I’m more inclined to smile, relaxed enough to let someone “go first,” and enjoy doing nice things for others that make their lives a part of my adventure and my adventure a part of their lives.

When wandering freely on a vagabond trail, all the random flickers of possibility sparkle along the road. Everywhere, there is a glitter of “maybe” and “if the wind blows in that direction, then…” In this state of being, we’re elevated, in some ways. The constraints of a job, a long-term plan, and a routine are clipped from our essence. What’s left?

For me, I find that joy is what’s left. A pure state of self is left. Are we meant to have a job, a long-term plan, and a routine? Some might say this is the “responsible” way to live your life, but I might argue that it’s not what we were born to be. It’s not even living, in my opinion. It’s a kind of death, in fact.

“Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.” ― Boris Pasternak

In this state of ultimate spiritual freedom, I’m the most altruistic. It makes me think that my fellow human is often chained to the belief that he or she must conform, and from this uncomfortable place, they express anger and selfishness. I want to ask: Have you not heard your own voice? Have you not been silent enough to hear the sound of your own breath? Did you feel it enter and exit your body? And then did you know what it really was? That was your life, that needle sharp awareness is everything that you are. Don’t belittle it and call it wrong for not being something more like the scenery all around you.

When you hit the road, when you let go, you’ll see how rapidly scenery can change. But that little breath within you is all you are. Offer this to yourself, to your neighbor, to the world, and learn to love with every breath.

At our center, we are love, aren’t we? And how can we ever reach our center if we are bogging it down with lies all the time? Lies telling us that we must hoard loads of crap in our closets. Lies telling us that we must live in a space with central heating and have 2.1 children and keep up with the latest of techno-gadget electro-toys. Shush. Silence. Listen to your breath.

There is nothing but a road.

There is nothing but a road and which way you will go today.

Doesn’t that make you want to smile? And if a little old man cuts you off in line, aren’t you more inclined to think something more like, “I wonder what his journey was like?” rather than, “Old jerk has forgotten his manners! I was standing here first!”

I really do think that the open road brings us closer to our true selves, which in turn makes us more loving, altruistic, kind beings.

What say you? Agree with me or not?

(Ajax, please let me know what Kierkegaard said about this. You were saying some great things about that today and I’d love to hear more.)

Pseudo-Citizens, by their very name, are international. They are short to long-term inhabitants of lands other than their birth country. These types often settle in a foreign country and learn the language, pick up the local customs, and integrate into the society. They may even pick up a university degree in the host country and will almost always add work experience to their resumes. They are not adverse to most norms of a dominant culture, are highly adaptable, and usually self-funded. This means they work as they go (English teachers, writers, travel guides, camp counselors, fruit pickers, etc).

They may stay in the foreign country for only a few months or they may eventually become citizens. Usually, they don’t stay anywhere long enough to gain a new citizenship—after all, they are Vagabonds! They need to move!

Whereas a Transient is motivated by a desire to live life in a pure form within a community, a Thoreau is motivated by a desire to live life in solitude, and a Nomad is motivated by a desire to move constantly, the Pseudo-Citizen is motivated by a desire to discover something new while expanding horizons. This is why they move to a country only for a time. They want to learn the language and get familiar with the local culture. Once they have accomplished this, they are often well into their planning for the next country. Sometimes, however, they do fall in love: either with the culture or a person living there. If this happens, they usually will settle for the life of a Frequent-Flyer or Back-Packer Vagabond (coming later). They may get lucky and marry a fellow Vagabond.

My good friend Left Eye Looking is a Pseudo-Citizen (as am I). She has lived in so many countries that I lost count, and she speaks so many languages that I’ve never been able to remember them all without asking her to remind me again.

I haven’t posted anything on here in so long. I was recently involved in a torrent love affair with an “exotic” man who I now am sure was a sociopath (seriously). I neglected most of my passions over the past few months as a result and am only now getting back into the swing of things. This post is still about being a vagabond, but with a twist.

It’s about where we came from, not where we are going.

A vagabond is always moving, full of experiences but empty of assumptions upon entering a foreign land (our experiences taught us better). Vagabonds move constantly. We embrace change. We understand that nothing (nearly) is permanent. We can surf the tide of an uncertain journey with tenacious grace. We can get by with or without public toilets, ATM machines, knowledge of the local language, itinerary, razors, and tourist guides. We are free spirits, ever new and ever evolving with a fluent horizon of various colors.

But make no mistake. We came from somewhere. A vagabond carries inside herself or himself a vast array of cultures and experiences accumulated over the years. And do not underestimate the way this effects a person’s character. Their quality of spirit. Their fortitude of heart. To those potholes in the road, like the one I stumbled in in Istanbul, Turkey, I want to remind the wretched holes and my fellow vagabonds that these are the times when our journey is teaching us what we set out to learn: the hard truths of life. These are the experiences that mold us into magnificently unique and able creatures.

When you face the most tormenting of challenges during your adventure, do what vagabonds do best: move on. Throw it behind you like a stepping stone. Extract its meaning and power, master its lesson, and then become a greater animal because of it. WE SET OUT seeking these lessons. WE ARE DRIVEN by our need to know more about existence, the world, and ourselves. WE REACH FOR dark corners and light expanses in one breath, so when that moment comes that you find yourself in a conundrum of challenge, thank your lucky stars, for you’ve encountered one of the great teachers on your quest for personal revolution.

My great teacher was a lying, manipulative, abusive sociopath. This teacher attempted to erase all I am and ever was and turn me into nothing but a stone in his collection of dead and motionless furniture. But, one of my heroines from Game of Thrones had a great response to her late husband’s second in command, as he tells her that when her husband, the king, dies, she will be nothing and everyone will turn on her. She replied, “I can never be nothing. I am the blood of the dragon.” (By the way, if you haven’t seen Game of Thrones, you seriously need to get on it. Now!)

When I look back to where I came from, I remember days and days of lessons, experiences, stepping stones, accomplishments, challenges, glimpses of paradise, intellectual standing ovations, and mistakes too. From all this, I come. Full to the brim with an evolutionary being, I come. Brazen with a deep sea of perspective that has seen various people across various lands with various beliefs and systems and hopes and dreams and nightmares and anguish. I see through the spectacles of wisdom that can only be gained when one is bold enough to let go of their pride and become a humble student of life.

Something a sociopath can never be. (This is a fact. Sociopaths, due to their lack of conscience, are unable to learn from mistakes, and therefore never get the chance to grow. There’s a lot of literature and research on this topic. Those born blind will never see.)

So, this I say to the sociopath. You didn’t kill me, though you tried, even if through your vicious teeth you often threatened. You didn’t conquer me. You didn’t end me. Every facet of agony you drug my soul through was but a long novel, its pages overflowing with rich, vivacious wisdom. Not because you were wise. Don’t get me wrong. But your torture reminded me with valiant assertion that you cannot DESTROY something IMMORTAL, for THAT is what the PAST is. That is where I CAME from, and it stands like the beautiful old dome across the cobble stone path from me at this moment.

I sit huddled over my laptop, as usual, in a quaint cafe in an historical German city. Across from me is what I currently believe to be the most beautiful piece of architecture that I have ever seen in my life. And behind me is my story.

So, vagabonds, as important as it is to keep looking ahead to the new landscapes of where we are going, perhaps today, upon reading this clip of words I’ve launched into cyber-space, you will be inspired to look behind yourself and remember where you came from.